


Black Eyes

by Wulferious



Category: Supernatural, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Demons, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hunter!Reader, Reader-Insert, Supernatural Crossover, Violence in Later Chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2018-11-09 16:58:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11108883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wulferious/pseuds/Wulferious
Summary: A hunter family, plus a demonic curse, plus two lovesick teenagers on opposite sides of a secret war. One maths equation one might not want to answer.





	1. Communication

**Author's Note:**

> Just a heads up that this fanfiction is on hiatus. I'm still working on it, don't worry, but I want this work to be completely done before I upload more. I also have a lot of editing to do for the chapters I've already published. Feel free to bookmark if you're interested in reading the end at one point. I'm not sure when that is, but I am currently halfway through the second to last chapter.

_It wasn’t long after that when you finally realised you had clumsily stumbled into the lives of an entire nest of demons._

~

There are moments in life where you wished you would never have to talk to anyone in order to get by. While those moments of thought are completely irrational and impossible, wishing and imagining that they were real often got you through the day. You were barely surviving as it is, stunned and a little lost that your father actually allowed you to stay enrolled at this school when you asked if you could finish the 12th grade. A part of you didn’t really want to, but it was better than living a life on the road and doing things that only worsened your mental state. Those completely irrational thoughts kept you grounded for the most part, but as of right now, you weren’t exactly sure it was working at all.

4th-period biology was a class you were interested in taking at first, considering the background you had with bodies and other things to do with human nature (among other things). The only problem was that you were beyond squeamish and didn’t take into account the fact that you had to combine experiments on dead things with communicating with other human beings when you signed up. So here you are, wishing that you had dropped this class while you still could, walking up to the crowd of seven of your classmates standing around a black lab table at the right side of your biology classroom.

“Hey, um… I know you guys already have seven members, but is it okay if I join your group?” You poked your fingers together nervously as you observed the boys. Along with your constant wish of never having to communicate with anyone at all, your social skills were lacking. Especially around people you found attractive.

Boy, were all seven of them attractive. All of them were smooth skinned, sun-kissed, god-given marvels that you could barely approach without feeling faint. They were tall, slenderly muscular and relatively kind people, from what you’ve seen of them. One stood out from the rest, medium-sized and slightly younger than some of the others. He donned a boxy smile and thin-rimmed, round glasses. You looked away when he caught your eye. You barely caught sight of a gleam of black as his eyes met yours. You ignored it and blamed your seeing things on an anxious mind.

“Sure, why not?” The tallest boy waved you over to him, urging you to put on your safety goggles. “It’s easy, anyway.” You moved in between the tallest boy, who you knew vaguely as Namjoon - the biology class’s resident genius - and Taehyung. While you were awkward around him and could never make full eye contact with him, he was kind and quite friendly toward you. He had a 4-D personality and his unique smile never failed to make you feel at ease. You were lucky that he was at least here, along with your cooking class in 5th period.

You knew vaguely who all the boys were, as they were popular among your year of students. They were prodigies, extremely talented and undeniably attractive. You obviously weren’t the first girl to notice it, but none of them ever seemed to have a girlfriend.

“This is the… enzyme lab, right?” You ask, taking up your notebook and flipping to the right table, trying not to make eye contact with any of the other boys that were currently eyeing you up and down. They all seemed fixated on you, which made you even more nervous than you felt before you approached them.

“Yeah. Come on, we’re about to soak the first paper disc,” Namjoon says, picking up a pair of elongated tweezers.

It took nearly all of your willpower to not puke where you stood. This whole lab was completely and utterly disgusting. In order to observe how enzymes separate Hydrogen Peroxide into Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide, the class had to separate phials of crushed, raw beef liver into three different water baths; one in ice water, another in room temperature water, and finally one in hot water. Then, soak a small paper disc in the liver, put the disc into a phial of Hydrogen Peroxide, and see how long it took for Oxygen bubbles to form and cause the disc to float to the top of the phial.

The lab was rather easy to perform, especially with so many people in one group, but the smell of raw liver didn’t exactly help your case. You flinched at contact on your back, looking up from your notebook to see Taehyung smiling down at you sympathetically.

“Are you okay?” He asked. It took you longer than you had hoped to think of a response that registered as more than a pained whine.

“Kind of. I mean… this isn’t exactly my strong suit,” you try to smile back until you see Namjoon lifting up the paper disc, unfortunately taking a rather large, bloody vein up with it. You gag. The two shortest boys, Jimin and Yoongi, who were standing across from you, looked you over with sympathy.

“Come on, you can move away from it. Here, I’ll take your spot.” Taehyung took a gentle hold of your shoulders and switched spots with you. Now you were in between him and Hoseok, the one that always had a cheerful, sunshine-and-rainbows type attitude toward literally everything, even a disgusting enzyme lab such as this. He had a timer loaded up onto his phone, and you assumed he was the one doing the timing. You only stood there, stiff as a board, trying to keep yourself composed. You recorded the times for the group but hardly did much else. At the end of class, everyone turned to clean up except for you and Taehyung.

“Are you still feeling sick?” Taehyung asked, patting your shoulder gently. “I should remind you that we cook next period.”

You looked up at him. “I can hardly move right now, let alone cook.”

“Come on, then… I’ll sit with you and walk you to next class when the bell rings. I’ll tell Ms C that you’re too woozy to cook today.”

“I really wished that I didn’t exist right now,” you whine. Taehyung only chuckled at you.

“It’s about to get worse… we still have to do the lab work.”

You groan in response. “Do we have a work period on Monday?”

“Nope,” Hoseok chimed in, moving past you with one of the liver phials, the smell causing you to gag again.

“I didn’t know you were this squeamish,” Taehyung commented as he rubbed at the small of your back. It soothed you, but you didn’t feel any less nauseous.

“Why do you think I always make you handle the meat during cooking days?” You ask, looking up at him and projecting the most sarcastic expression you could conjure. You walked back to your desk, pressing your palms against the wood and leaning down to close your eyes and think of something else.

“Touche,” Taehyung complied. He returned to his desk, packing up his backpack before moving back toward you, stuffing your binder inside your own backpack and helping you put it on. “So… you’re telling me that you’re a vegetarian? I’ve seen you stuff your face with those ham sandwiches we made a couple weeks back.”

“Of course I’m not a vegetarian, dumbo! I just don’t like seeing raw meats. Or touching them. Or cutting them. Or seeing blood.” You groan at the thought of that bloody vein as the bell rang, you and Taehyung separating from the 6-man horde of his friends with a small wave.

“Interesting. And you said you wanted to be… what now? A doctor, right?” Taehyung asked. You weren’t looking at him, but you could still see the smirk gracing his lips. You pout.

“Oh.. shut up!”

That moment was when you realised you had never been so comfortable socialising with another person. To tell the truth, this was the first school you had stayed at for longer than a few weeks or a month. Your father was a hunter. A… special type of hunter. The job required constant moves around the country, and you had spent most of your life in the backseat of a car and in the beds of cheap motels. You never had enough time to truly make friends, no matter how much you wanted to at the start.

Instead of spending your time at the park, you grew up learning to line the windows and doors of any place with salt before going to bed, drawing devil’s traps under the doormat and on the ceiling over your bed, and arming yourself with a silver dagger. At age 5, instead of playing with toy dolls and hot wheel cars, you learned how to shoot a small pistol. At age 10, instead of wobbling around in high heels too big for your feet, you could shoot someone right between the eyes 5 buildings away with a sniper rifle. At age 13, instead of confessing to your first crush, you had mercilessly killed a demon, along with the person they were possessing.

Ever since that day, you were a recluse. You were constantly having nightmares, episodes of PTSD and sometimes even hallucinations. You had no friends and refused to make one, even if you could laugh along with the people in your 5th-period cooking group. That was the only time of day when you actually opened your mouth to speak, fearing that if you let yourself go too far, everything would spill out like opening floodgates. You being able to talk at all was a miracle, and the fact that you could openly talk to Taehyung outside of class just now was on a completely different level of impossible. Yet, here you were, talking and laughing with him as if you were letting yourself be a normal teenager. It felt wrong.

~

“Do you want me to walk you home? You’re looking paler by the minute and I won’t be able to stand by and be guilt free if you pass out and die walking by yourself,” Taehyung added as the two of you stayed after the bell to wash dishes, as usual. “We also still have to do the lab write-up.”

You looked over at him, hesitant. You would have to work with him in the lab either way. “Thank you, um… that would be nice if it isn't too much trouble.” You looked back at the dish you were washing for a minute. “On second thought…”

“What is it?” He asked, moving to put a bowl away. You remembered how decked out your house was with devil’s traps, newspapers of hunt leads, historical textbooks, loose research papers, salt and other hunter-esque things, including your basement, which was probably more well-equipped than a military base. It would be incredibly off-putting to anyone that didn’t even know that your type of hunter existed. Your home was definitely not designed with house guests in mind. It wasn’t even designed to _be_ a home when it was built.

“Would it be okay with your parents if I went to your house instead? My place looks like a tornado ripped it a new one,” you mumble. Taehyung chuckled at your response.

“I’m somewhat of a troubled kid, so I just live with the guys. They won’t care if you come over. They’ll probably mooch the answers for the lab off of us, though.” Taehyung grinned at you.

“That’s fine with me. You guys let me join your group in the first place.”

The walk to Taehyung’s place was nice. The two of you joked around, talked about his interests, and even stopped to pet a cat that was walking on the grass of a lawn by the house you two passed at the end of one of the streets. This… strange feeling in your chest was prominent every time the two of you looked at each other, smiled in the other’s direction, or laughed at a joke.  
As soon as you saw yourself giving in, you had to back away from it. Creating awkward silences, refusing to answer a question or something along those lines in order to push him away. No matter how drawn you were to Taehyung, and how comfortable you felt yourself getting, you couldn’t let him be your friend. You couldn’t get close to him. Not after what you’ve done. Not after what you’ve seen.

“Here we are,” Taehyung chimed as the two of you approached a complex of townhouses. Each house looked thin and relatively small, but they were well decorated with burgundy bricks and white window frames, most likely offsetting the size with attractive architecture.

Taehyung led you inside the complex and you walked down the small lane toward the back. The furthest house at the end of the complex was where you figured you were heading, despite the lawn of the house looking much better-taken care of than you would have expected for a house lived in by seven teenage boys.

“Home sweet home!” Taehyung smiled at you as he pulled his key chain from his backpack, promptly unlocking the door. You smile faintly back at him but look away when the pinch in your chest returned. You stayed silent as the two of you stepped inside and shrugged off your backpacks.

“I'm back!” Taehyung called into the empty front hall. You looked around at the spotless house. The walls were painted white and red, creating a mostly modern feel. The hallway leads into the living room, containing a cream L-shaped couch accompanied by a small side table with a circular lamp, a glass coffee table and a small flat screen television pinned up on the wall created by the staircase to your left. The kitchen, you assumed, was to your right, but it was blocked off by a wall and a sliding white door. The room itself was illuminated brightly by the sliding patio doors across from you and Taehyung, the white curtains pulled back to let the sun shine through.

The kitchen door slid open and Jin stepped through. He was wearing a white apron over top his clothes, and dark blue oven mitts over his hands. A smile spread across his face as he saw you, walking toward you and Taehyung, slipping off the oven mitts. You waved faintly at him, taking in the smell of food that followed him out from the kitchen.

“Hello, (Y/N),” Jin greeted. “It's nice to see you again,” he commented cheerfully.

“Uh, yeah. It's nice to see you too, Jin.” You smile back, narrowly avoiding eye contact with him. In your head, another flick of black appeared over Jin's eyes. You dug your index nail into the palm of your hand to snap out of any illusions you were beginning to see again.

Jin’s warm expression toward you left you at ease, even if it was just a little bit, masking the tense anxiousness that had been building since your head is making you see demon eyes again. You sigh inwardly, disappointed that your pills seemed to no longer work. “Everyone’s upstairs working on the lab write-up. You're welcome to stay for dinner if you’d like.”

You don an expression of surprise. You hadn't expected him to invite you to stay for dinner. You wanted to tell him 'no', to say that you had to go home after you finished the lab, but there would be absolutely no benefit to your denying him. You would go home to a crappy, junk-food-filled dinner if you even ate at all. You would be in your barren house by yourself, go to bed unfulfilled and probably hungry. Besides, it wasn’t in you to be rude, especially if people had been nothing but kind to you.

“Sure, I’d like that.” You pulled off your shoes, watching as Jin's expression lit up even more in excitement. He bounded back into the kitchen through the sliding door with seemingly renewed fervour.

“You’re going to love Jin’s cooking,” Taehyung praised, taking off his own sneakers. You could only nod in response, replying with a meek 'hm'. Taehyung grabbed his notebook from his backpack, leading you upstairs when you promptly grabbed yours. The hallway on the second floor was extremely thin, and lead off into two different bedrooms and what looked to be a bathroom at the end of the hall. It was equally as spotless as the first floor, coloured fully in deep red. The cleanliness of this house was impeccable, if not a little bit suspicious.

“Your house is so much nicer than mine,” you comment absentmindedly as you looked over your surroundings.  
“Aw, I doubt that,” Taehyung replies. “Jin is just over-obsessive. Cleanliness doesn’t make a house a home.”

“I guess not. Still, your house wins over mine.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Taehyung’s boxy smile reappeared. You had no idea how to respond to that. There would be no way that he could see the inside of your house, and the thought of his repulsion somehow made you nervous. While you spent all of this time trying to reject Taehyung, you were afraid of being rejected by him. You could only look away from him, waiting to take the lead into the right bedroom.

Taehyung led you into the room closest to the staircase. Namjoon, Hoseok, Jimin, Yoongi and Jungkook were spread out on the floor with their notes, looking up and waving at you once you entered the room behind Taehyung.

“Hey, (Y/N)!” Jungkook greeted with a smile. You sat down between him and Taehyung, smiling back at Jungkook and mumbling a small ‘hi’ in return.

“We’ve already filled out the chart. You can copy us, if you’d like,” Namjoon passed you his table, already neatly filled out with the times you recorded and the differences between each water bath temperature.

“Um, thanks.”

The night progressed similarly to the first interaction you had. You were awkward, often unsure of what to say and honestly uncomfortable with how many people you were surrounded by at one time. The tight feeling of nervousness pulsed through your chest non-stop, and sitting down with them for dinner (which you had to admit was the most delicious and nourishing meal you’ve had since before your mother died) was equally as nerve wracking.

“Hey, are you alright?” Taehyung asked as you wolfed down your food. It had been so long since you had eaten something other than take-out Chinese food and hungry man TV dinners. Your father was almost never home and you never really learned to cook for yourself, so you had to rely on other things to eat if you ate at all. “You’re eating as if you hadn’t seen a scrap in weeks.”  
You look up from your plate, chewing and swallowing hastily as you noticed seven pairs of eyes locked on you. Your eyes went wide and you instinctively curled up in your chair.  
“Hey, hey! It’s alright,” Jin reassured, holding up a hand to try and calm you down. “We’re not making fun of you. We just care.”

‘Why?’ The thought ran through your head. Why should they care?

“Um…” Your eyes pass over each of the boys. All of them still looked surprised at how fast you were eating, but all of them had a reassuring smile painted on their faces, especially Taehyung, who even moved to pass you the bowl of steaming vegetables so you could pile more onto your plate.

“You don’t have to explain it. Just enjoy it. You can ask for seconds anytime you’d like,” Jin states, and everyone nods in agreement in the seconds following.

You had never felt so accepted, nor welcomed. You could no longer tell if it was a feeling you wanted or not. The guilt that still had its grip on your heart kept you in the mindset that you didn’t deserve it. Would they still care about you if they found out the truth about you? Would they pat you on the back and help you through things that made you squeamish if they knew? Would they welcome you into their home? Would they be disgusted by you?

Those thoughts haunted you as Taehyung walked you home that night. When you and Taehyung reached the gravel pathway to the farmhouse you called home, it felt a little hard to believe that you were actually going to bed with a full stomach.

"Thanks for working on the lab with me," you say once you reached the front door to your house.  
"It's no problem," Taehyung replied with a smile. "It's getting late, though. I should be going home."

"Okay," you say. You reach into your backpack for your house key, watching Taehyung turn around and start walking back down the path. "Wait!" A thought pops into your head and you shout after him without thinking.

"What is it?" He asks. 

"Um, can I have your number? I want you to text me when you get home so I know you're safe," you mumble, barely able to form a proper sentence. 

"Of course. Only if I can have yours too. I'm glad you care." 

You're lucky that it was dark outside as you and Taehyung exchanged phone numbers, as the dusk hid your heated cheeks. You dig your nails into your palms again as you step inside your house a few minutes later. You shouldn't be feeling this way.


	2. Bonding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taehyung insists on making friends with (Y/N) while they begrudgingly go along with it. In this case, Taehyung convinces her to watch her first movie with him.

Over the weeks that progressed, you spent more and more time with Taehyung. While it wasn’t actually an ideal situation for you, you found yourself hanging out with him anyway. As much as you tried to push Taehyung away, he just came back, like a stray cat looking for food or a squirrel that made a burrow in the tree of your backyard. At one point, you just let him do what he wanted. You found yourself unable to be rid of him, despite how cold you attempted (and most likely failed) to be.

The only thing you could do was let him open up to you. You were constantly conflicting with your inner self, battling the decision to let Taehyung in or to keep trying to push him away. You had never made a friend before, so you didn’t know if the way you felt was normal to feel toward a friend. The pinch in your chest was no longer something that made you want to run away, now you craved it. A blush would rise to your cheeks if Taehyung praised you, and you felt yourself smiling at home while you were thinking about him. Taehyung was on your mind more often than anything else was, and you didn’t know how to deal with it, so instead of telling him, you kept it to yourself.

“So, tell me what you’re interested in.” Taehyung looked up from his Chromebook, smiling at you brightly from the desk next to you. While you were working on your midterms, Taehyung had decided to switch desks from beside Travis to you, considering how close the two of you were becoming, however reluctant you seemed to be.

“What?” You ask in surprise, looking up from the slurry of words you had been spilling out on your own Chromebook.

“Tell me about the stuff you like,” he repeated. “I hardly know anything about you other than the fact that you’re squeamish and you always say your house is unfit for visitors.”

 

You looked away and back to him a couple times. “Nobody’s asked me about the stuff I like,” you whisper. “I don’t exactly know how to respond…”

 

“Just list off some things,” Taehyung encouraged.

 

You thought for a moment. In truth, you never really asked yourself that question either. You never really had time to be interested in things.

 

“Well, um… I like to read.” You say, wracking your brain for the bare minimum of answers.

 

“Like what?” He asked.

 

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” you answer truthfully. All you ever had to read at your house were textbooks and hunters’ journals your father had accumulated over the years.

 

“Come on, I want to know about you! You’re practically my best friend and yet you hardly ever talk to me.” Taehyung pouted at you.

 

His best friend? That sentence shocked you. You sputtered out a string of incomprehensible babble until Taehyung patted your back. He smiled genuinely at you, his signature boxy smile never failing to bring a blush to your cheeks.

 

“Best friend?” You ask meekly. He only continued to smile brightly at you.

 

“Yeah, of course! You’re the only one who will listen to me and won’t think I’m crazy. You’re quiet, but I like that about you. If you were as wild as me, nobody would be able to tolerate us!”

 

You had to agree with him. If you were as energetic as Taehyung was, your teachers would probably make you transfer classes because of the disturbances.

 

“So,” Taehyung continued, “what books do you like?”

 

“Um,” you start. “My dad is kind of a stickler for history and stuff, so we only have old textbooks and research at my house. It’s all I was ever allowed to read. I’ve always wanted to read a science fiction book, though.”

 

“Oh,” Taehyung stopped to think for a moment. Your heart pounded at the thought that he might see you as even more strange than you already were. “I need to get you into sci-fi! That genre is the best!”

You stared forward, not really listening to Taehyung’s offer. You thought he was going to freak out over the only thing you found interesting about yourself. Instead, he wanted to help you discover something new, something you had never been allowed to read.  

 

“Like what?” You ask, adjusting your position in your chair to pay more attention to Taehyung than your work.

“You know the Aliens movies? I love them! They’re some of the most awesome combinations between science and monster movies!” Taehyung exclaims as quietly as he can, as to not disturb the students who were actually working.

 

“Um, well,” you bite your tongue briefly. “I’ve never actually watched a movie before.”

 

“What?!”

 

“Yeah, um… I moved around a lot as a kid, so we never really owned things other than the stuff that my dad needed for his job. We’d live in really cramped spaces and there was almost never room for a television and things like that. All I know is that my mom’s dream was to take me to see a movie, but… she… died… a few years ago, before we moved into the house permanently. So, I never really got the chance.” You smile somberly at Taehyung before moving your gaze to the front of the room. You didn’t like mentioning your mother, but it just sort of… slipped.

 

Taehyung didn't reply to you for a good moment, and you took his silence as a sign of sympathy. Then, he straightened out his posture and his smile returned.

 

“Hey, I have an idea! Do you want to come over after school?” Taehyung asked, causing you to look over at him again, removing yourself from your thoughts and your spaced-out stare at the empty chair at the desk in front of you. He blinked, and you could have sworn for half a second that a gleam of black flashed through his eyes. You mentally shook your head and pushed it out of your mind. Did you forget to take your medication? No, that wasn’t it. You remembered to take it this morning.

 

“Um,” you start. You always had a hard time saying no, especially when you laid eyes on the cute, pouty face he always made (and was currently making) whenever he wanted something.

 

“Great! We can watch Aliens, I can show you a whole bunch of science books and movies and if you want, you can stay ove-”

 

Taehyung's offer was cut off by your cell phone ringing. You patted both your pockets to realise that the ringtone came from your burner phone and the only person who had the number to said phone was your father, who had gone completely off the grid for the past two months. You silently pleaded that nothing was wrong. Taehyung watched you with a curious expression, noticing that you owned two different cell phones.

 

“Do you need to answer that?” Ms Carter asked, looking up from her desk at the front of the room. You thanked the lord above that she wasn't teaching a lesson.

 

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, excuse me.” You stood up from your chair, giving Taehyung an apologetic expression as you slipped out of the room to answer the phone.

 

“Dad,” you spoke hurriedly, crossing the fingers of your free hand behind your back. “Is there something wrong? Are you okay?”

 

Your father’s calm voice lifted a lot of sudden weight off your shoulders. “I'm okay, don't worry.” You sigh in relief. “I'm closing in on the nest, but it will take a few more weeks. I won't be home for your birthday. I'm sorry, (Y/N).” You were relieved but disappointed.

 

“That’s okay. As long as you stay alive and come home,” you reply, hiding any sign of a dejected tone of voice.

 

“I'm sending Dean to stay with you for a few days.” Your father sounded adamant. “I need another hunter to stay with you in case they come after you.”

 

“I can handle myself, I know how to-”

 

“(Y/N).” You knew the tone of his voice was the end of your protest.

 

“Yes, sir.” You agree in defeat.

 

“He’ll be there around the time you get home from school. Take care.” After that, he hung up. You stood in the hallway for a few moments, stunned at how easily your father can just cut off a conversation like that; and when you finally made your way back into the classroom - you were a bit less worried, but not any happier at all.

 

Dean Winchester was the oldest son of John Winchester, a good friend of your dad’s. The two of them constantly owed each other favours, and Dean was the (often reluctant) pawn of watching over you during your father’s longer hunts. While you were never opposed to Dean’s presence, he was often overprotective and a strange, Dean-y spin of brotherly toward you. It had been a while since you’d seen him, he was in his last year of high school while you were ‘finishing’ middle school. He must be in his early twenties by now.

 

“Is everything okay?” Taehyung asked. You looked down at your normal phone and realised that it was only a few minutes until the day was over. Taehyung had already packed up your binder, pencil case and textbook into your backpack, handing it to you so the two of you could stand by the door. The rest of the class gathered up at the front of the room, impatiently waiting for the bell to ring.

 

“I guess so. A family friend is coming to basically... babysit me this weekend because my dad’s trip was extended,” you explain. Taehyung frowned.

 

“I guess you can’t hang out then,” he pouts.

 

“I mean…” You start, feeling guilty that Taehyung was so excited for you to see all these new things, “I don’t think Dean would care if I came home late. He’d understand if I stayed with you guys tonight,” you cross your fingers behind your back and hoped that Dean really was the cool type like he kept making himself out to be.

 

“Woohoo!” You returned Taehyung’s boxy smile as he cheered. You couldn’t help but feel a surge of energy from his enthusiasm. Once the bell rang, the two of you headed over to the hallway where Taehyung and his friends dominated an entire grouping of lockers. While Taehyung put in the combination to his locker and you patiently waited for him to put his books away, you wondered where the other six boys were.

 

“Hey, where are the others?” You think aloud, watching people file out of the school with different degrees of rushing speed.

 

“Oh, they all have 5th-period spares. They usually go home early since Jin can drive,” Taehyung answered. He seemed agitated but did his best to hide it. “Ready to go to your locker?”

 

“Yeah.” The school was nearly empty by the time the two of you had walked to the other side of the school to reach your locker. You quickly dropped off the things you didn’t need, Taehyung eagerly watching you. When you put the lock back on the door, you began walking through the school to the football field and the path that led toward Taehyung’s complex.

 

“So, you’ve really never seen a movie before?” Taehyung asked as the two of you cut through a catwalk, dodging overgrown tree branches and plants. You only shrugged at him.

 

“I didn’t think it was such a big deal,” you answer. You remembered how your mother always promised that she would show you a movie someday. But then....

 

“Sure they are! They might not have any direct impact on our lives, but it’s a way to connect. Something to talk about, something to create off of. I can’t tell you how much food Jin’s made by being inspired by movies,” Taehyung rambles. “Oh! Speaking of food, I got my allowance. Want to have some ice cream?”

 

“Oh, um, I don’t know… I don’t have any money.”

 

“That shouldn’t be a problem. My treat, okay?” Taehyung grinned at you, nodding rapidly and taking your hand to pull you with him, solidifying your lack of choice in the matter. You both exited the catwalk and took a turn in the opposite direction of Taehyung’s house and eventually came to a little ice cream shop nestled in a little plaza by the street’s intersection.

 

Taehyung opened the door for you and you stopped to look at the atmosphere of the little cafe. The restaurant was designed like a 50’s diner, with black and white checkered floors, red leather seats and a small bar at the front with round backless stools in front of it. The walls were a faded pink colour and decorated with car posters and coca cola wall hangs. At the back of the room was a classic jukebox, playing a song that you vaguely knew from when you would ride in the Impala with Dean. On the crevice between the roof and the upper walls were lines of pink and blue neon lights. It only took a few seconds for a waitress standing behind the bar counter to notice you and walk over with a smile.

 

“Oh, hi, Taehyung! Back again, I see? And with a friend!” The waitress called once she spotted him.

“Yep! Table for two please, Rhiannon!” Taehyung smiled widely at the girl as she picked up two small menus and led the two of you to a booth. She handed you quaint and cute little menus as you sat down across from one another.

“Need a minute?” She asked sweetly, and you nodded your head.

 

“I’ll have the usual, please!” Taehyung grinned excitedly, handing the menu back to Rhiannon, and she nodded, returning the smile and walking away. “You’re going to love this! This place has the best ice cream ever!”

 

“I’ll take your word for it,” you reply, looking at the pictures of the different ice creams you could get. “What did you order?”

 

“A banana split,” Taehyung answers right away. “It’s my favourite treat, even though it drains most of my allowance money,” he frowns briefly, but shrugs. “It’s worth it.”

 

“Oh,” you look over the menu over and over again, all of the choices overwhelming you. While you have had the occasional ice cream before, you’ve only really had vanilla and chocolate. Strawberry? Moose tracks? Bear claw? Mint chip? You simply couldn’t decide. “What do you think I should have?”

 

“Okay, first,” Taehyung started, “Please tell me you’ve at least had ice cream before.” He was staring at you with wide eyes, expecting you to say that you haven’t.

 

“Yes, but only the generic flavours.”

 

“Thank Go-” He paused, flinching. “Thank goodness. So, um, what are you thinking of trying?” He asked.

 

“I don’t know…”

 

“Well, what do you like in terms of food?” He wondered, watching you as you scanned the menu again. You placed it flat on the table so he could lean forward and look at all the different flavours.

 

“Well, I don’t really have much of a choice to eat anything other than gross microwave TV dinners, so I’m not sure,” you answer dejectedly.

 

“Oh, well… that’s a buzzkill. Hmm… let’s see… ah! How about mint chip! It’s really refreshing and it’s got chocolate in it,” Taehyung offers, looking up as Rhiannon arrives with his banana split. “Yes! Thanks, Rhiannon!”

 

Rhiannon chuckles. “You’re welcome, Taehyung. So, have you decided on something?” She asks, turning to look at you.

 

“Um, mint chip, please,” you ask politely, handing the menu back to Rhiannon.

 

“Would you like any sprinkles on top?”

 

“Um, no thank you.”

“Alright, I’ll be back soon.” You watched Rhiannon retreat into the kitchen again, only snapping out of your stare when you felt the end of a spoon touch your cheek.

 

“Come on, you’ve got to try this!” Taehyung exclaims as you wiped your cheek with a napkin, turning your attention to the grinning boy sitting across from you. Taehyung scooped some of his treat onto the spoon and held it out to you again. “Go on, I think you’ll like it.”

 

You raise an eyebrow at him, but he only stretches his reach farther toward you. You try to take the spoon from him, but his hand retreats. Now you’re a little confused, lips pressed together awkwardly.

 

“No, silly! Let me,” his voice quickly quieted down to a whisper, “open your mouth.” You blush as you do as he says, Taehyung feeding you the ice cream and piece of banana. You avert your eyes from him as he pulls the spoon gently away so he can continue eating. The flavour swirls around in your mouth, and a smile spreads across your face from how much you liked it.

 

“Soooooo?” You look back at Taehyung, who’s looking at you with his boxy smile again, elbow perched on the table holding up the spoon. His face is dusted with a pinkish blush, which makes your heart twinge.

 

“I um… I really like it.”

Taehyung just smiles at you as he swallows another huge spoonful of his treat. “I knew you would!”

 

By the time your ice cream bowl came, Taehyung had mostly finished his own treat. The whole time you were munching on your surprisingly good mint ice cream, Taehyung had his eyes on you. Every time you looked up from your food to him, your stomach would churn and you would feel that now familiar pinch in your chest. You found yourself focusing on his features, the little freckles that dotted his face, his messy brown hair, his perfectly sculpted cheekbones and his tanned skin.

 

He smiled at you as he chewed on a piece of banana, creating a crease on his left cheek. You couldn’t figure out for the life of you why every little detail you could point out was making you happy. Having Taehyung look at you made you happy, and being able to sit with him quietly and do something mundane made you happy. To think that someone liked you enough and cared enough to just be with you made you want to cry.

 

“Hey, Taehyung?” You say quietly as you and Taehyung got up so he could pay Rhiannon for your treat.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Thank you… you have no idea how happy I am right now. Thank you.” Taehyung wraps an arm around your shoulder in response, smiling down at you. You blinked as fast as you could to keep from crying while Taehyung separated from you to dig out his wallet. He paid for your ice cream and guided you out the door as Rhiannon waved goodbye. That was when you broke out into tears.

 

“Are you okay?!” Taehyung exclaims as you veer off to lean against the brick walls.

 

“I’m fine, I just…” you sniffle, “I’ve never felt so happy before, and I thought that this wouldn’t last very long and now you’re doing something for me that I don’t deserve, Taehyung, I…”

 

“You deserve it. You deserve the whole planet, and I would give it to you if I could, (Y/N). You’re my best friend and you do so much for me even though you don’t realise it. I know how you feel. Come on, hop on my back, I can carry you back to my house.”

 

“I can-”

“Please, I want to do this for you.” Taehyung raises his eyebrows at you before turning around and crouching down.

 

“Okay, um, if you’re sure,” you hesitantly stand up straight, making your way to Taehyung and climbing onto his back. He lifts you up, grip closing on your thighs and your arms gently resting around his neck. As soon as the two of you found a comfortable way for him to carry you, you buried your face into the crook of his neck to unwillingly shed more tears as he started walking.

 

“You know, I hope this lasts forever. I love the guys, but they’re my brothers. You’re the first real friend I’ve had.” Taehyung says as he takes a turn and makes his way back down the street.

 

“Yeah, I hope so too.”

 

~

The rest of the night was a blur to you. Once you got home, you grabbed some popcorn and sat in the living room to watch some movies while the other six boys were off doing their own things about the house. Soon enough the first movie was over and it was time for dinner- a meal where you were finally comfortable enough to ask for seconds.

 

Back again to movies, having refilled your popcorn as Namjoon and Hoseok decided to join you. Late into the night, you ignored your buzzing phone as you were constantly amazed by what was going on. Sometime around 3 AM you had fallen asleep on the couch, head resting against Taehyung’s chest as through the movies the two of you crept closer and closer together.

 

From one of the most peaceful nights in your life, you had no idea what you were in for the next morning.


	3. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Y/N) seems to have finally let go and let Taehyung into their life. But their unplanned sleepover leads to something bigger than just waking up.

You groan softly as you begin to wake up, more comfortable than you’d thought you’d be in your bed. A soft blanket covered you instead of the scratchy wool ‘functional, doesn't have to be comfortable’ blanket your father made you keep. The sun was shining brightly over you, and it made you wonder how you could have slept so comfortably in the first place. You opened your eyes, blinking a bit to realise that you weren’t at home. You were still at Taehyung’s, most likely having fallen asleep while watching movies together with him.

After this realisation, you noticed that someone was breathing underneath you, and you looked up to see Taehyung smiling down at you. His hand was gently trailing through your hair, the other hand over your own that was resting over your stomach. Your head was resting against Taehyung’s chest and it took a little bit of manoeuvring to look at his face, but it all still brought a sense of comfort to you. Taehyung seemed much calmer than you had ever seen him, quiet and careful, cuddled up with you.

“Hey,” he whispered, his voice soft and barely audible.

“Mhmn,” you reply at first, stifling a yawn and shifting yourself in his hold. “Good morning. What time is it?”

“Just a little bit past dawn,” he answers, bringing the soft blanket back up to your shoulder. “You can sleep some more if you like.”

“Aren’t you uncomfortable?” You ask, pressing your lips together, but stayed still until he spoke again.

“No, I feel good,” he hummed briefly, never stopping with combing his fingers through your hair. “Go back to sleep.”

You were too drowsy and comfortable to protest. You snuggled up more against his form, humming at the feeling of his fingertips moving from your hair to trace your neck. It made you shiver a little bit, wondering if this was the kind of thing friends did. If it wasn’t, would he still be doing it? Your eyes fluttered closed again, and with your vision closing out into a slightly brightened darkness, your cares and your curiosity melted away.

You were awakened again most likely a few hours later by the smell of bacon and pancakes wafting into the living room from the kitchen. A melodic tune flowed through the kitchen, echoing into the open living room where you awoke on top of Taehyung for the second time. Your eyes fluttered open to see Namjoon, Hoseok, Jimin, Jungkook and Yoongi making their way tiredly down the stairs, most likely absentmindedly following the scent of food while they continued to wake up.

Once Namjoon spotted you, he smiled sheepishly and moved his eye contact to Taehyung you assumed, winking as if he knew something you didn’t.

“Hello again,” Taehyung says as his hand gently rubs your tummy over your shirt. “Want to have some breakfast?”

“Yes please.” While you didn’t exactly want to move from the position you were in, but the smell of what you have come to know as good food outweighed your reluctance. Sitting down with your now seven friends and having breakfast was a nice ending to your first sleepover, even if it was unplanned.

“So, how did you like the movies?” Jimin asked, smiling at you from across the table.

“I liked them a lot! I never really knew what I was missing out on,” you reply as you took to grabbing food to pile on your plate.

“What was your favourite?” Hoseok asked, grinning.

“I think it might be Terminator 2… I loved it when that robot just became all liquidy and put himself back together!”

“It was so cute seeing you two lovebirds last night, completely knocked out on the couch like that during the Matrix,” Jin comments, piling another egg onto his plate. “It was maybe 4 AM when I finally brought that blanket down for you.”

From the initial comfort of the morning, you immediately froze in anxiety.

“ _Lovebirds?_ ” You squeak. Looking over at Taehyung, you realised that he was for once avoiding eye contact with you, red as a tomato.

“Oh please. We all know that friends don’t fall asleep on top of each other like a mess of tangled rope and then wake up all aglow like that,” Namjoon adds. “Especially during an action movie. You do know that friends don’t do that, right?” Everyone turned to look at you, eyebrows raised questioningly.

You felt your chest tighten with embarrassment. No, you didn’t know. How were you supposed to with the only person you’ve ever been close with was only around you once every six or so years, was much older than you and chased away anyone who wanted to approach you with a ‘Hunter’s Test’? You felt your lips tear into a frown. No matter how much you tried to force yourself to smile, you were completely unable to change your expression and hide the way you felt at all.

Perhaps Taehyung was something more than you originally planned him to be, and that was definitely true when you allowed him into your life, but after the past few months, you really couldn’t control the way you feel anymore. All of that military training, all of what’s happened, all of what haunts you, you couldn’t stop yourself from being happy. You wanted to puke, and from that simple question, your inside-self was already whispering ‘I told you so’, ‘they’re just making fun of you now’, ‘you should never have made friends’, ‘you should have never let yourself be so naive’, ‘you’re not supposed to fall in love’.  
That was when you stood up. “Thanks again, Jin, for the dinner and breakfast. Thanks everyone for letting me stay the night but I think I’ve overstayed my welcome. Dean is probably worried sick about me, so I should probably go home. I’ll just go now,” you say quickly, wiping your mouth with your sleeve, pushing in your chair and rushing to the door.

Everyone looked surprised at your outburst, but you couldn’t apologize now, sit back down and go back into the indulgence you should never have allowed yourself to fall so deep into. All of it was wrong.

“Wait! (Y/N)! Wait, please!” You ignored Taehyung’s pleas as you pulled on your shoes and fled the house. As you walked down the pathway, you looked down at the ground as you passed Jin’s little bed of flowers and the creased footsteps in the dirt from Namjoon trailing through it, your eyes began to fill with tears. You could hear Taehyung’s muffled yelling in the house, but you still kept walking. You should have never let yourself be happy, to make friends, to become close with anyone except your cousins Sam and Dean. It was stupid to think you could be normal.

Once you turned down the street, you broke out into a run. Your phone started buzzing in your pocket again, but you couldn’t bring yourself to check it. Not at least until you came to the stop light by the street where you would go off-road to the little farmhouse where you lived.

Dean was probably worried about you, so you would have to call his cell to tell him that you were alright. After spending much longer than you planned at Tae’s, you at least owed him that much. Perhaps you owed Taehyung that much as well, considering all the time you let him think that you could be a good friend. You unlocked your phone to a slurry of texts sent by Taehyung.

_Tae: (Y/N), please, I’m sorry! I won’t let anyone make fun of you anymore, please, just come back._

_Tae: Come on, nobody meant what they said, I promise!_

_Tae: Where are you? Are you really that fast?_

_Tae: You usually don’t take this long to answer… please tell me that you’re safe at least. Wait at the stop sign near my house so I can at least walk you home!  
Tae: Why aren’t you here? (Y/N), I’m worried!_

_Tae: Fine, I get it if you don’t want to be friends anymore. I won’t bother you. Just please tell me that you’re safe and then I’ll delete your number, okay?_

Look at you go. Perhaps you should have expected it, seeing as you left the house so abruptly. Taehyung didn’t want to be friends anymore. Isn’t that what you wanted when Taehyung started bothering you? You could have stopped coming to school to avoid feeling like a human being again, especially when Taehyung started showing you basic decency you had never really gotten since your mother died. Couldn’t you just have stopped when he started getting excited when he walked into Biology and saw you already sitting there, smiling back at him? When he offered you his lunch that Jin had packed for him because you could never bring a lunch and bought you strawberry milk when he had any scraps of change because you could never afford it? Buying you ice cream and then sharing his with you anyway? Cuddling with you and finally giving you a night where you didn’t wake up screaming from a nightmare?

Why did you have to be so oblivious that you were in love with him? Why did you let him sit next to you, do all these wonderful things for you? Why did he have to make you feel important? Your breathing became shallow and your shirt sleeves were wet with what tears you were able to wipe away. With shaky hands, you texted him back.

_(Y/N): I’m sorry, Tae… I just… I’m safe, I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I’m not a good friend. I can’t even pass as a human being. If you don’t want to be friends anymore I understand. I know that I’m stupid. Thanks for everything._

After quickly sending what you wished wasn’t your final text, you quickly dialled Dean’s number.

“(Y/N)! Finally, I’ve been trying to reach for the past 15 hours!” Dean’s voice sounded through the phone.

“Yeah, sorry… I was out last night and…”

“Well well well! Someone’s finally decided to start breaking the rules, eh champ?” Dean interrupted. You rolled your eyes at his nickname for you.

“Um, I guess so?” You sniffle a little bit, crossing the fingers of your other hand that Dean didn’t hear it. When the walk sign lit up, you crossed the road, continuing to walk home.

“Aw, we aren’t doing the walk of shame, are we? Aren’t you a little young for that?” Dean asked slyly.

“As if you hadn’t done it while you were in high school,” you defended. “And no, it’s not the walk of shame.”

“Sure, you got me there. But what’s with the sob?”

“It’s nothing. You wouldn’t understand.” You sighed as you reached the wheat field, reminding yourself to clear out another walking path through the overgrown plants so that you couldn’t come across anything that could be hiding between you and your home.

“Try me, kid. Our parents are basically clones of each other. You can tell me.”

“Fine, just… I’m almost home. I’ll tell you in person.” With that, you hung up, sticking your phone in your pocket. When you finally reached the proper path and the driveway to the house, you saw Dean leaning against the trunk of his Impala, watching him stand up straight and smile with open arms as he spotted you.

“Come on, champ.” He caught you in a nearly lung-crushing hug as you sprinted up to him, sobbing into his chest. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I… I don’t know, Dean… I was being stupid.”

“What?”

“I made a friend. I shouldn’t have, and then it started to become something else but I didn’t know until this morning when he-”  
“Wait, stop, stop. I said the whole ‘walk of shame’ thing as a joke. Where even were you last night?” Dean asked, releasing you from his hold to cross his arms and tap his foot against the gravel driveway.

“I was at Taehyung’s. He lives with six other guys an-”

“Six?!”

“It’s not a big deal, Dean!”

“It sure the hell is not a big deal! Who do I have to shoot? What did they do to you?!” You grabbed Dean’s arm before he could unlock the trunk to his car, knowing that the bottom was fake and held a small arsenal full of guns and other hunter-y things that you also kept in the basement of your house.

“Nothing, Dean. They didn’t do anything… I just… started to freak out because I fell asleep on the couch with Taehyung and they accused us of being love birds.” You explain, sighing at your incompetence. “Come on, let’s just go inside.”

The two of you stepped inside, Dean stopping to look over the interior of the house. The house before you was nothing like the one you had spent the previous night in. The interior of your house was nothing like you had thought a real home would look like. The walls were brick, no wallpaper or paint. Cork boards littered them, pinned with string and newspaper clippings everywhere. Dean closed the door behind him, causing a small wind current that made the papers rustle together gently. Dream Catchers, necklaces and other spiritual things hung from strings nailed to the wooden bannisters above you.

The tables and desks your father kept around were covered with now dusty textbooks and shining spiritual crystals, ranging from tiny pebbles to giant pointed stones. Painted on the roof were a multitude of devil’s traps and different protective writings.

A circular wall across from the front door held panelled windows and a small reading nook covered with corduroy pillows, and beside it sat two armchairs and a bookshelf pressed against the wall beside the nook. The chairs were facing a fireplace, above it on the mantle were a few unlit candles surrounding a picture of your mother and a glass case above the photo with a long barreled revolver sitting inside.

“(Y/N), you’ve got to stop being so hard on yourself. I know what your dad is like because he’s exactly like mine, but you don’t have to follow in his footsteps if you don’t want to. Look at Sam. He’s got a girlfriend and he’s in school just like you. You can turn everything around if you wanted to. Come on, what made you come home with red eyes? Being called a love bird isn’t exactly bad. It's a bit of an overreaction, isn't it?” Dean kicked off his shoes. “This place is even worse than Bobby’s, gives me the shivers every time I walk in.”

You ignored Dean’s half-speech, for the most part. “Yeah, sorry… my dad won’t let me do anything about it. Want a beer?” You ask casually, slipping off your own shoes and heading into the kitchen. You opened up the door, thankful that you had no fresh groceries in it to make it smell any worse than it already did. You needed to clean it.

“Sure, but champ, you started talking about all this so you can’t start avoiding it now. What makes you think any of your new friends want out? Did they find out about Aunt (M/N)?”

“No.” You clenched your fist around the neck of Dean’s beer bottle as you grabbed it from the fridge, tossing it to your cousin who didn’t even flinch as his hand came up to catch it and flip the bottle open.

“Then what’s the big deal?” Dean asked.

“Read it, if you have to. I don’t know what else to say.” You took out your phone and selected Taehyung’s chat, showing him the messages. “He said he didn’t want to be friends anymore.”

Dean sat down at one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace, quickly scrolled through the chat, reading it over as he sipped at the beer in his other hand. “Champ, I don’t mean to make you feel any worse, but I think your self-destructiveness made you read his text wrong,” he stated gently. “It says ‘I get it if _you_ don’t want to be friends anymore’. As much as I want to shoot him for getting close to you, I don’t think what you think he said is actually what he said.”

You quickly grabbed back your phone, frantically re-reading Taehyung’s texts over and over. “Why am I so stupid?” Tears pricked at your eyes again and your frown returned. You began pacing around the room, wondering how much Taehyung hated you now.

“Damn, that’s not really what I wanted you to get out of that…” Dean mumbled. “Come here,” with that, you cautiously walked over to Dean, watching his outstretched arms retreat back to his sides once he noticed something. He put the beer down on the side table next to the arm chair and wiped at the centre of your shirt with his finger.

“Um? Dean?”

“Gimme a sec, you’ve got something on your shirt. Probably sand,” he said, gathering some of the powder onto his finger. “Did you not know this was on you?”  
“No, not really,” you look down at your shirt, noticing that the substance was in the vague shape of a hand. Dean brought his fingers up to his nose, which made you raise your eyebrows in question.

“It’s sulphur.”

“What?”

Dean stood up, towering over you. “(Y/N), this is _sulphur_. Don’t you know what that means?”

“ _Yes_ , Dean, I know what it means, okay!” You argue, looking up at your cousin as he started to pace around the room.

“When did you come in contact with a demon?! I thought I was supposed to be protecting you from them! Your dad is out there hunting them!” Dean shouted, and it caused you to retreat into yourself, wide eyed and a little afraid. You knew what Dean could do if he wanted, and it wasn’t a pretty thought.

“I don’t know, okay, Dean? I’m just as shocked as you are, I… I’m just scared -” That first part was a lie. You were already putting two and two together. You hadn’t been missing your pills. What you have been seeing the past few months were flicks of demon’s eyes. The sulphur mark in the shape of Taehyung’s hand was enough to solidify a theory, but you didn’t want to believe it. You couldn’t.

A knock on the door cut you off. Both you and Dean turned your attention to the door, ending your argument.

“I’ll get the door,” Dean states firmly. “Go change your shirt.”

Who else would be here? Your house was almost impossible to find unless you’ve been there before. That was one thing you liked about this gloomy place, no door to door salesmen.

“(Y/N) I-” A voice sounded from the front door, and you recognised it, and that made you freeze in your place. “You’re not (Y/N).”

“Nope,” Dean answers, his smirk even apparent in his voice. “Who are you?”

“I’m Taehyung, (Y/N)’s best friend. She left so abruptly this morning and she forgot her backpack. I came to drop it off and see if she’s okay…” he paused for a moment, “sir.” Taehyung held up your backpack as you turned around to see him. He was looking past Dean into the house, eyes widening, flicking from one thing to the next until he finally laid his eyes on you.

“Thanks, kid. (Y/N)’s really distraught right now-”

“I don’t care. I want to see her,” Taehyung seemed determined. “Please, may I come in?”

“Aren’t you persistent? Fine. (Y/N), that kid’s here to se-” Dean turned to spot you standing still, “Oh. I see how it is, don’t know how to listen, do you?” Dean questioned, a small smile returning to his face.

“Hey, I learned it from Sam,” you say quietly, looking over at Taehyung, who looked a little distressed as he closed the door behind him and stood on the inside door mat. “H-hi… Tae…”

“I’ll… uh, leave you two alone.” Dean waved sheepishly, moving to the kitchen and retreating through the patio door.

“I’m glad you’re at home safe,” he said, placing your backpack down by your shoes. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry and that I won’t-”

“Don’t say that you won’t bother me anymore,” you say, tears pin pricking at your eyes again. “I never meant… I never meant to say any of it, I…”

Taehyung tried to step forward, but he pursed his lips and decided to stay still. “I didn’t want you to get freaked out, I’m sorry…”

“It’s not your fault, it’s me, it’s this life, I-”

“What life? (Y/N), I invited you over so that I could learn about you. But I’ve learned nothing! Please, let me in. I care about you so much. Talk about it and maybe you’d feel better.” Taehyung tilts his head to the side, welcoming you to talk. You stand there for a few moments, completely speechless. You hadn’t spoken a word about what happened since well, it happened.

“It would probably scare you away and I-”

“Nothing’s going to scare me away,” Taehyung interrupts, his tone firm. He crosses his arms. “Please. I promise I won’t be scared away.”

You sigh, chewing on the inside of your cheek. “Okay,” you agree. “Fine, I’ll tell you.” You stop for another moment, moving back to the fireplace to pick up the dusty photo frame. You wipe the glass and show it to Taehyung.

“This… this is my mom. She… she was…I… she... ” You stop, biting your lip for a moment. “She died when I was 13 years old. I was the one who killed her.” You stop again, your breath stuttering. “My family, including Dean, are a family of what we call ‘Hunters’. Not the ones that hunt animals for sport. We hunt monsters and demons. The things that go ‘bump’ in the night and everything that crawls up into our world from Hell. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s true. My mom, she was amazing. She was smart, resourceful, kind. I would have given my own life to see her live for even a few minutes longer, but she was suffering.” You stop again, tears forming and spilling down your cheeks. Taehyung stayed silent, listening.

“There was this demon, I can’t remember their name anymore, but they were spreading something. A curse or a disease called Croatoan. Cutting humans open and bleeding into them, turning them into mad, demonic monsters that wanted nothing more than to spread it themselves. My parents found out about the curse and started hunting the source down, reluctantly leaving me to kill the infected humans. The demon’s human host was killed a few days later, but the demon lived. It… it possessed her. It possessed my mom. My dad couldn’t do anything, he was frozen, watching the love of his life lose control. It was thrashing about inside her, breaking her arms and repairing them, cutting open her skin and bleeding everywhere. I knew that my mom wasn’t going to live if the demon ever left her, so I… so I… I had to do what my dad couldn’t. I… I had to stop it! I… I needed to do something I had never pictured ever and I -”

Taehyung was shocked. “(Y/N)-”

You interrupt him. “So I shot her full of salt and then I killed her! Both she and the demon are gone now, all because of me.” It was a sight that you could still remember and saw many times in the vivid nightmares you experienced almost every night. Your knees became weak, your breaths shallow. You were sobbing now, quickly walking up to Taehyung just to collapse in his arms, both of you sinking to your knees on the floor. “It’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault!” You cried. Taehyung just held you, his hand rubbing up and down on your back in an attempt to soothe you.

“So that’s why you wanted to become a doctor,” Taehyung whispers to you. “So that you could cure the demon’s disease,”

Dean froze as he came back through the patio door, watching the scene in front of him unfold. “(Y/N), you didn’t have to tell him...”

You couldn’t say anything back. You only shoved your forehead into the crook of Taehyung’s neck, letting him continue to hold you.  
“Taehyung, was it? Come in, sit down with her on the cushions, both of you’ll get scratched on the door mat.” Dean offers, sitting back down in the arm chair.

“Um… I think we’re fine here, sir…” Taehyung says nervously over the sounds of your sobbing.

“Why?” Dean asked, suspicion in his voice. You heard Dean’s footsteps behind you, approaching the two of you.

Taehyung didn’t respond. You had barely calmed down, immediately missing Taehyung’s hand on your back. Dean had pushed Taehyung’s hand away and tugged at your shoulders to pull you out of his grip and drag you away. He threw you to the side and punched Taehyung across the jaw.

“(Y/N), he’s the demon! Get the Colt! Do it now!”

You barely had enough time to process what was going on as Dean held his silver gun, aiming at Taehyung, who was staring up at Dean with pitch black, unblinking eyes. You were frozen, unable to believe what you were seeing. Both men turned their attention to you as you backed up against the wall separating the sitting room from the kitchen, holding your knees and watching with wide eyes, holding in your cries and screams of horror.

All of this time, you’ve been in love with a demon?

“(Y/N)!” Dean shouts.

“Don’t you think I would have killed you already if I wanted to?” Taehyung asked calmly. “Don’t you think I would have been a terrible person to you? (Y/N), I love you, I would never hurt you!”

You blinked. The three words that hit you like an arrow to the heart. ‘I love you’.

“Shut up, demon! Stop trying to manipulate her! (Y/N), get the Colt and we can end this!”

“Taehyung…” you sob. “How long has he been gone?”

“I’m right here,” Taehyung says. Dean goes quiet. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“If you’re a demon, then you’re not him! Let him go!” You shout, doing your best to stand up on shaking legs, leaning against the wall to keep your balance. Your tears were beginning to dry on your cheeks, and you could taste the saltiness in your mouth.

“It’s me, I promise! I’ll prove it to you!”

“Then prove it!” You had by now cried yourself dry, your voice becoming hoarse. “Prove it…”

Dean nudged the gun further towards Taehyung as he reached for the hem of his shirt.

“It’s okay, I don’t have anything to hide,” he says, lifting his shirt up and over his torso.

“You’d better not,” Dean snaps back.

Once Taehyung’s shirt was off, you saw it. A gaping, puffy series of scars that spelt out the word CROATOAN clearly across his chest just below his collarbone.

“I didn’t know what this was. All of us were infected by it almost five years ago. We were travelling together with our parents. That’s when it hit us… a whole slew of these dirty, crazy people pinned us down, opened up the skin in our arms and bled into them…” Taehyung shows you the inside of his wrist, another angry red scar upon it, something that you’ve never noticed before. “My parents tried to fight them off but… they were killed. I felt hot, angry, tense and sick. I wanted to cut out my stomach, to tear out my eyes because I hurt so much. Every inch of my body was on fire. And then the blackness consumed my eyes.”

Both you and Dean were completely speechless.

“All I wanted to do was be free of that pain. It seared inside of me, it was in all seven of us for nearly two years. Then… it was just… gone. We hid from you. We hid from the hunters, the people who were supposed to protect us from whatever happened. They wanted to kill us because we resembled what they hated most. It wasn’t our fault. I hated hunters. I loathed them for the two years of agony that was never supposed to befall me or my brothers, of wishing for death, but I was afraid to let go. When I met you, I thought I saw someone who had gone through just as much pain as I did. You became my reason to hold on, even more so when you finally approached me at that lab table. Have I proven myself to you yet? (Y/N), I love you. Please, believe me. I’m not a demon, not really.”

“Dean… lower your gun.”

“(Y/N)-”

“I said, _lower it_.” You made your way shakily to Taehyung again, not before grabbing Dean’s dagger from his jacket pocket. You lifted up the doormat and scratched away at the corner of the devil’s trap that was etched into the floorboards with paint. Taehyung took in a deep breath when he was freed.

“What will you do when your father gets back?” Dean asked, hesitantly lowering his gun. “You know that even my word won’t stop him.”

You took a long blink, sighing.

Taehyung grabbed your hand. “What does he mean?” He asked, and you turned to look back at him.

“My father is still a hunter. He specializes in demons. He could kill you in 100 different ways over 100 different time frames. It won’t matter what either of us says. Only revenge drives him now. That’s why he isn’t here. That’s why he doesn’t care for me. If he wants to kill all that I love, and he will, I won’t be here to greet him when he steps outside that vehicle.”


	4. Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Y/N), Dean and Taehyung sort out their differences and return to the townhouse, but (Y/N) is still troubled and is facing a problem that could be bigger than her cousin pulling a gun on the person she loves.

“You can’t be serious, can you?!” Dean exclaims as you race up the stairs by the fireplace up to your tiny, nearly empty bedroom, backpack in hand. Dean followed you, but in the paranoia of getting trapped inside another of the many devil’s snare paintings all around the house, Taehyung stood on the shoe mat, occasionally peeking out of the window beside the front door.

“Yes. I’m _very_ serious about this, Dean.” You state in return, slamming your backpack on the floor. You emptied it of anything that you brought from school, mostly useless things as you kept your books in your personal locker. You then began to stuff it with as many shirts and jeans, socks and underwear as you could. Finally, the scruffy yet soft teddy bear your mother bought for you when you were a baby was stuffed in against the zipper.

“You know that if you leave he’ll find you. He’ll find out about the demon’s nest and he will kill all seven of them. Maybe even you for fraternising with them. _For falling in love with one_.” Dean’s voice was growing softer. He was worried.

You sling your backpack over your shoulder, whipping your body back to face Dean. “Does it look like I care?” You snarl. “I’ll be fine, okay, Dean? I know how to handle myself.”

“If you did, why was I sent here?” He asked, tapping his foot on the creaky floor with his arms crossed over his chest. You push past him, stomping down the stairs and retreating to Taehyung who wrapped his arms around you, silently and defensively.

“Because my father thinks I’m incompetent. He thinks that I never listened to what he said, that I just wanted to frolick in flowery meadows like all the normal girls my age. He thinks I’ll just drop dead if I lay my eyes on a demon!”

“All you’ve ever wanted was to be normal,” Dean comments. “You’re exactly like Sam, (Y/N). You’re going to prove him right.”

“Will I? Dean, I get that you care. That’s nice. But since you haven’t murdered Taehyung… it just goes to show that you’re on my side. Stop trying to get me to be like you and dad and uncle John. Stop trying to stay on the neutral ground and help us. If you’re not going to, just take your shiny car and get the fuck out,” you spit fire, gripping Taehyung’s free hand as his arm tightens around you.

“None of us wants to die,” Taehyung says, his voice barely above a whisper. “We’re…”

“We’re all just kids, Dean. Are you going to help us or _not?_ ” You ask harshly.

Dean stops for a moment, sighing. His eyebrows creased. “Fine. You know, you’re more like Sam than you think,” he mumbles, you turning the handle of the door and leading the two men outside. “I’ll give you a ride.”

“I think being like your brother gives me a bit of an edge,” you comment as you all climbed into the Impala.

“Don’t take advantage of it.”

The ride to Taehyung’s was awkwardly silent. Dean didn’t even put on any music, which was the most out-of-character thing for him to do, or, well, not do. You couldn’t blame him. What happened in the past half hour was heavier than a lot of the things the both of you have seen, even in the lives of being hunters. Dean knew that what he was doing was against his… well, more like his dad’s moral code. Letting any Supernatural being live, to let them grip and hug someone that he loved so dearly, to let them take her into their home and have her leave his life within the blink of an eye. He tightly gripped the steering wheel and forgot to flip the turn signal twice while he was lost in thought.

You could barely see his facial expressions through the rearview mirror, but you could tell that he was running through scenarios as he drove. He would give you eye contact whenever he asked for a direction, but other than that, he looked like he was focused on the road. You knew that Dean still had his gun on him, ready to grab it and shoot Taehyung at any moment. You bit your lip out of pure nervousness, gripping Taehyung’s hand tightly.

Taehyung was also uncharacteristically quiet. Not that you could blame him either. In that short amount of time, he came a cat’s hair close to death more than once all because he got stuck in some hick’s trap in his crazy house with his crazy nephew and the girl he loved.

‘It had to be you,’ he thought to himself over and over. Never sarcastic, but determined. He knew that from the day you walked into that Biology classroom at the start of the year. He knew that from when he first said ‘Hello, do you want to join my cooking group?’ in 5th period. He knew that it had to be you when he smiled and said ‘Sorry to startle you. My name’s Kim Taehyung, and I’m going to be your friend. What’s your name?’ It was always you.

“Okay, we’re here,” Dean said flatly. “The one on the end, right?”

“Yes… thank you, Dean.”

The three of you got out of the car, Taehyung making his way silently through the lawn, stopping at the front door, watching you cling to Dean’s chest.

 

“I love you, Dean,” you whisper, an iron-clad grip on the jacket he was wearing. “I love you so much.”

It took Dean a moment to return your hug. He patted your hair and ran his other hand soothingly up and down your back. When you separated, he pressed a kiss to your forehead. “I love you too, Champ.”

“I’ll miss you.”

 

Dean smiled sombrely at you. “I know.”

“Be safe.”

“You know I will. You too, promise, okay?”

“I promise.” Somehow, you felt that your promise wasn’t really a promise. Something lingering in the back of your mind, a dread that had wedged its way into your heart. But, you still smiled. “Tell Sam I love him too.”

Dean scoffed. “If I ever see him again,” he added, taking your hand in his and squeezing it gently before letting go. He turned towards his car and got in, tears forming in your eyes as you heard the door shut, music flowing out a few seconds later.

You forced yourself to smile as you stood still, watching Dean back out of the driveway. His eyes were briefly locked with yours, and you could hear the faint tune of Led Zeppelin’s song ‘Thank You’ playing on his radio. You lifted a hand briefly to wave, the image of his sleek car driving off into the distance burning into your memory. You knew from the moment that his car left your sight that you would never see him again.

“Let’s get you inside,” Taehyung called. You were barely able to move, sniffling and allowing teardrops to run down your cheeks. Your arms were brought from their passive places at your side to hug yourself. Everything that could have gone wrong today went wrong.

 

Today you abandoned you nearly lost your best friend, someone you loved more dearly than anyone else. Today you lost your family - your cousins Sam and Dean. Today you lost any sense of safety. Your heart was broken and all you could do was cry. You felt Taehyung’s hands on your shoulders, gently turning you and walking you to the door of the house. You were a wreck, barely able to walk by yourself.

As soon as you were inside, you were full on sobbing. Taehyung bent down to untie the laces of your shoes and help step out of them, slipping off your backpack and leading you to the couch in the living room where you had woken up that morning.

Everyone was sitting in the living room except for Yoongi, all of them standing up and walking over to you and Taehyung.

“What happened?” Jin asked, concerned.

“She had to leave home, I… it’s a long story,” Taehyung said, taking your hand. “It’s okay if she stays here, right?”

“Of course,” Jin answers. “It might be a little cramped, though.”

You looked up at Jin, eyes puffy and cheeks still wet with tears. “T-t-thank you,” you say, voice raspy, stuttering and hiccuping as you cried. Taehyung wiped your tears away with the sleeve of his shirt, guiding you to sit down. By the time you and Taehyung were sitting down on the couch, Taehyung passing a tissue to you, Namjoon had made his way to your backpack, unzipping it.

“Um… (Y/N)… why is there an - ow! Why is there a silver dagger in your backpack?!” Namjoon exclaimed, to your eyes widening. You forgot that you had kept Dean’s knife.

“She’s got silver?!” Jimin exclaimed, standing up. “Taehyung, what did you tell her?!”

Soon, all of the boys (strangely except for Yoongi), were standing significant ways away from you at the other side of the room. You only looked up at them weakly, not able to form an excuse.

“I’m sorry,” you sob. “I don’t know how to…”

“Just tell us,” Hoseok stated as soft as he could, but you could hear the dread in his voice. You knew that all of them thought they were in danger.

“I… I never wanted my life,” you say, wiping your own tears away now. Still, your heart was being ripped into a million pieces. You had gotten your hopes up. You were going to lose the family you had only realized you had gained a few hours ago. “I guess… old habits die hard.”

Jimin looked over at Taehyung. “She knows, doesn’t she?”

Taehyung nodded sombrely. “Yeah.”

“Don’t you know how dangerous this is?! I knew there was something off about her,” Jungkook commented, venom in his words.

“Stop,” Taehyung pleaded as the last of your tears fell. “She left her family for us! She saved my life! Her cousin had a gun to my forehead and she stopped him. If it weren’t for her, I’d be dead!”

“No, don’t defend me, Tae. I understand. I’ll just go,” you dejectedly stand, pulling away harshly as Taehyung attempted to grab your arm. “I’ve caused enough trouble. I’ll just disappear so I can’t hurt anyone else.” As you make your way to the door, you grab your silver knife from your backpack, looking at Namjoon from the corner of your eye as he was still recoiling from the burn.

“(Y/N), wait-” Taehyung called as you gripped the door handle and pushed it open, ready to return to the front porch of your home where your father would find your dead body rotting in the sun. It would be better that way.

“You idiots!” You hear Taehyung yell from the house. “Now look at what you’ve done! All of you said that you wanted me to find someone to spend my life with so we can all begin to forget this whole fucking mess. You even let Yoongi have a human girl, and what do you do with the girl I choose?! Fucking kick her out after she saves all our asses and drive her to think she has no other way out than killing herself! I hate you all!”

You only kept walking. You had finally decided. You weren’t going to be a hunter, and you were never going to be normal. Nobody would love you if they found out the truth, and you were done being anti-social, a recluse, starving and miserable. It would be better to end it all now before your heart broke even more. You could only ever live as a half-life, never belonging anywhere except a grave, no matter how much you wanted to believe otherwise.

“(Y/N)!” Taehyung yelled, chasing after you.

“Leave me alone, Taehyung,” you don’t even look up from the ground as you continue dejectedly walking away.

“Please, don’t leave me again,” he pleaded, running in front of you, turning to face you and holding out his arms. “I can’t bear watching you walk away!”

“ _What do you want me to do, Taehyung_?!” You shout. He recoils slightly with a frown. “Live out my life as some sort of monster? To live as someone that your brothers are afraid of, to be a fucking _Winchester_ in the midst of half-demons?!” You jabbed a finger in his direction, tears swimming in your eyes. “The moment Namjoon found my knife, it was over. There’s no chance, and I should never have thought there would be.” You showed your knife to him. “Let me go.”

“(Y/N), don’t-”

“ _Let me go! Find someone else! Find someone who isn’t a pathetic excuse for a human being! I’m a murderer, Taehyung! I’m delusional, undesirable, how can you even love some pathetic monster like me_?!” You raise your knife, flipping it in your hand so the tip is pointed at your chest. Your voice lowered to a whisper, “let me go or I’ll stab my own heart out in your front garden!”

Taehyung was shocked. Through the growing blur in your eyes, you could see the terror and heartbreak wrought upon his face. “I’m not going to let you go, (Y/N),” he sobbed. “I love you. I can’t just let you go, I can’t just watch you die. You forget,” he paused, the blackness of his demon eyes returning. “I’m a pathetic monster too.”

A piercing emotional pain struck your chest, but you shook your head. “It doesn’t matter,” you say. “I’ve been ready to die since I shot my mom. I watched her die, Taehyung. I watched her die and it was all my fault! I still see the blood running from what was left of her skull every night, I can’t- I can’t-” you lift the dagger, screwing your eyes shut and plunging the dagger toward your chest, but the impact never came.

Taehyung cried out in pain. Opening your eyes, you saw Taehyung’s pitch black eyes, his face contorted with agony. Your eyes trailed down to his hands, which were steaming heavily, blood beginning to seep from his grip. You could feel your jaw drop.

“I love you, (Y/N). Please… stay alive for a little while longer?” He attempts to smile, groaning at the pain of gripping the blade of the knife even harder as you attempt to pull it away from him. “I love you, no matter what happened to you.”

For a second, you snapped out of your trance. You’re full on sobbing now, still gripping onto the handle of the knife. “Taehyung, I-” A few seconds later, a pair of arms seize your own, holding you back and causing you to let go of the knife, allowing Taehyung to drop it.

“ _Let me go!_ ” You screech, tears finally spilling over the rims of your eyes as you watch Taehyung drop the knife, holding his bloody hands out to look at them. “Just let me die!”

“Calm down, (Y/N)!” You heard Jungkook call from behind you. However, you didn’t listen. You only continued to struggle against Jungkook’s hold as he dragged you back into the house, only to bash your head against the front door’s side frame, causing you to black out.

~~  
_  
“You’ll never be a true Winchester,” your father spat, slapping you across the face. When you turned back to face him, he shoved a picture, **that** picture, of your mother in your face. “Look at what you’ve done!”_

_The picture was gruesome, familiar. An overwhelming sense of guilt washed over you, more tears spilling down your cheeks. There she was, a corpse in front of you. Standing behind your father, the photographer, you remembered that you were holding the gun that killed her, a large rifle that should never have been used at close range. You had equipped it with a modified Colt bullet, never imagining that you would have to use it against your own mother._

_Half of her head had been blown away. Debris of her brain, eyes and pieces of her skull were littered about the room in the photo- some of it cut off by the edge of the frame. Most of her nose and mouth were still intact, as well as her torso- which was only covered by a tattered sweater which the demon possessor had ripped to perfectly even ribbons for fun. She was covered in blood, and so was the floor. When that picture was taken- so were you._

_Every time your father tied you to that chair and forced you to look at the photo, you would retch in your throat, always failing to force it back down. Your memory returned to that very moment every night, the rain of blood drenching you even further than what had transpired before that moment: Croatoan demons had been throwing themselves at you all day, blood spewing out of their chests where you had shot them. Every night you could vividly see, vividly relive that day._

_“It’s your fault,” he would say repeatedly. “It’s your fault she’s dead! You should have died in her place!”_

_~~_

_“(Y/N)~” your mother’s voice rang mischievously, approaching you slowly as you aim your rifle at her, standing at the other end of the cabin. “You’re going to shoot your own mother?”_

_“If it’s to free her of you, I am!” You shouted, voice wavering. “I’ll kill you! I’ll save hundreds of lives!”_

_“Kill me? Oh, honey,” your mother stood up straight, already nearly naked, clothes torn to shreds. On her chest were newly bleeding wounds reading CROATOAN. “I’d like to see you try.”_

_You cocked your weapon once more. “I’m not joking!” You screech, finger now on the trigger. You were ready to shoot._

_“Aw, look at the little bitty baby spawn of Winchester,” the demon giggled, flailing about. Your mother’s arm snapped as the demon hit it against a ruined fireplace, going limp in the opposite way it should. “She’s gonna kill her mommy! Did your cousins ever tell you what happened to theirs? Seems like a stroke of bad luck, I’d say.”_

_“Shut the fuck up!”_

_“Naughty, naughty! How old are you again? 13? Strong words for a child.”_

_“I said, shut the FUCK UP!”_

_The demon caused your mother to stumble even further toward you, eventually pressing her forehead against the barrel of your gun. “Maybe instead of running your pretty little mouth, you should shoot me already,” the demon cackled again. “If you’re chickening out, I understand. Maybe I’ll come rape you and see if you change your mi-”_

_In a scream of rage, you pulled the trigger. Your mother’s head exploded before you, the black smoke of the demon possessing her lit up in flames, mixing in sulphur and ashes to the rain of blood now splattered on your face._


	5. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Y/N) is woken up from her episode. Adjusting to a normal (mostly) life is going to be difficult.

“(Y/N)! Wake up!” 

You were startled out of your dream with a blood-curdling scream, trying your best not to retch up your breakfast. You struggled to move, but it seemed as if you were tied down. To a chair.

“No, no, God, please… I don’t want to see it again,” you plead with a whisper, not bothering to open your eyes. “Please…”

A hand gripped your shoulder. “Hey, (Y/N), it’s just us,” a soothing voice followed. You slowly raised your head toward the voice, your eyes opening to Jin kneeling in front of you. He had a sympathetic look on his face, tilting his head to the side. 

“You’ve been thrashing, screaming and muttering for the past hour,” he says. You looked at him, only to put your head back down to stare at your lap. 

“(Y/N), we’re so sorry,” Hoseok added; his breath hitching, indicating that he was crying. “We all had no idea. I mean… if it weren’t for you…”

“My mother would still be alive,” you say dejectedly, voice raspy.

“If it weren’t for you,” Namjoon corrects, voice slightly harsher, “we’d still be crazy. Many more people would be dead. We were there that day. You were the one that stopped it. We… we owe our lives to you.”

You lick your lips, swallowing thickly, not accepting their thanks. “Where’s Taehyung?” You barely had the energy to lift up your head again. “Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” Jimin answers. “He’s upstairs with Yoongi and Rhiannon getting his hands patched up.”

“Can… can I go see him?” You expected them to say no, to keep you tied to the chair. But, nearly immediately, you were freed from your bonds.

“They’re in the second bedroom on the left,” Namjoon says, pointing to the staircase. Without a second thought, you bolted up the stairs.

Pushing open the door to the second bedroom, you were met with Yoongi and the girl from the ice cream shop. They were wrapping Taehyung’s left hand as he was laying against the wall his mattress was pushed up against, the couple only stopping briefly when Taehyung’s frown immediately changed to a thankful grin.

“(Y/N)!”

You couldn’t speak. You stood in the door frame until Taehyung’s bandages were tied, waiting for Yoongi and his girlfriend to stand up and make their way from the room. Rhiannon patted your back gently on her way out, whispering ‘it’s not your fault,’ before ushering you in and closing the door behind her.

“(Y/N), don’t worry about me. The one benefit of being this way is that wounds heal quickly,” Taehyung muses. Still, no spoken response from you. You looked up at him, tears welling in your eyes again. Perhaps right now you thought you might have cried all your tears, but you were quickly proven wrong. You made your way across the room, climbing onto the bed where Taehyung was sitting and straddling his body, plunking yourself down in his lap and wrapping your arms tightly around him.

You felt a finger move to your chin, lifting your head up so he could make eye contact with you. “I’d rather you’d be here and me injured than you be dead. Don’t ever do that again, okay?”

You nod.

“Promise?” He asks, raising his eyebrows at you expectantly.

You nod again, still unable to form words. You’re finally smiling again, a sense of warmth washing over you as Taehyung wraps his other arm around you, holding you close.

“Good,” he smiles as well. “Is… is it okay if I kiss you?” He asks sweetly, tilting his head to the side slightly.

You swallow thickly, finally grasping the ability to use your voice, “yeah, it’s okay.”

He was slow and nervous, your heart in turn beginning to beat out of your chest. You had no idea what to expect- nobody had kissed you before. His tightly bandaged right hand moved to touch your neck, and he slowly moved to meet his lips with yours.

It was soft and drawn-out, you could swear up and down that he could taste the tears you had been crying, but he never pulled back. It felt awkward, it felt warm, it felt soft. When your lips separated you were the one to initiate the second- eyes closing in bliss. You still don’t know what you’ve done to deserve Kim Taehyung, but you’ll take life and what you could get.

A long nap entangled in the small mattress Taehyung called a bed later, Jin summoned you both down for dinner. You wiped the sleep off your face and the two of you went downstairs. It felt strange to eat so often, especially since you had a hearty breakfast earlier in the day. 

“Are you feeling better?” Yoongi asked, noticing that you’re still avoiding eye contact with everyone as you began loading your plate up with food. 

“I don’t really know,” you answer honestly. “This is all so new to me. Eating more than once per day, staying in a nice house where I can feel comfortable. It’s especially strange to see that more than one person cares about me.”

Jin frowned. “It shouldn’t be new,” he states.

“Jin’s right. If you’re going to stay with us, you’ll get used to it,” Namjoon added.

“I hope so,” you mumble. 

“So, we might as well talk about boarding since we have yet another family member,” Jimin starts before shoving a bunch of food in his mouth.

 

“Yeah, you’re right. There’s eight of us now,” Hoseok agreed. “I guess it’s four to each room now.”

“I want (Y/N) to share with Jimin, Kookie and I,” Taehyung stated nearly immediately. Everyone rolled their eyes.

“Tae, I get that you love her, but I’d rather not room with you and your girlfriend. I can call you two that now, right?” Jungkook asked, turning to look at you. You nodded cautiously, still a little overwhelmed. You were a little bit confused, eyebrows raised in curiosity to Jungkook’s meaning.

“I promise I won’t do anything!” Taehyung whined. “I don’t want her to have nightmares, that’s all. I’m not even the pervert of this family!”

You stayed silent, eating much faster than everyone else in the room, keeping back a giggle.

“Yes, yes, we all know that goes to Namjoon,” Jin sighed, turning to you, ignoring Namjoon’s protest of ‘ _HEY!_ ’. “(Y/N), we only have a limited amount of beds, so I assume you want to be roomed with Taehyung?”

You assumed you were blushing as you chewed on your food. You nodded sheepishly, Jin raising a hand to gesture at you. “See? Problem solved.”

“Yay!” Taehyung cheered, tentatively wrapping an arm around your shoulders.

“ _I can’t wait_ until they get frisky right next to us,” Jimin groaned sarcastically, Jungkook nodding in agreement.

Taehyung stuck his tongue out at them. “You might as well listen closely because it’s the only action you two are ever going to get!” He teased.

~ 

When it was time to go to bed, you and Taehyung went upstairs to your room first. You unpacked your bag and put away your clothes in a drawer of the small dresser Taehyung had cleared out for you and put your teddy bear next to the pillows on your bed.

“Let’s get changed,” Taehyung offered, immediately moving to take off his shirt. You blushed at his lack of modesty. 

“Um,” you mumble, barely able to peel your eyes away from him as he stripped, no shame in his expression whatsoever.

“What’s up?”

“I don’t have any pyjamas,” you state, still barely able to get the words out due to your embarrassment.

“You sleep naked?” He asked, a grin curling onto his lips as he stepped into a pair of pyjama bottoms. 

“Um….”

“Aw, don’t be ashamed! I don’t care,” his mischievous grin made you turn your head away. “(Y/N),” he called sweetly. “I was just kidding. If you want you can have one of mine until you’re comfortable enough.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“Don’t worry about anything anymore, okay?”

You nod your head as Taehyung turned to fish out more pyjamas for you from the tiny dresser across from his bed. “I won’t.”

You were soon dressed in loose pyjama bottoms and one of Taehyung’s shirts. You changed in the bathroom, nervous to take off your bra in front of him.

That night the two of you clung to one another, still not completely free of what happened earlier in the day. Tonight was the night your nightmares finally stopped, but it would be long before you were finally free of your early life.


	6. Photo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With school coming to a close, everyone begins to focus on their final projects.

You rolled your head back in the lunchroom, exasperated and tired, avoiding looking over what you had written for your project. Even though you considered English an easy subject, writing about your life wasn’t easy. For your final, you had to write about three stages in your life: childhood, your current life and what you think your future would look like. While you could say that your current life would be a lot easier to write about and your future was starting to look optimistic - your childhood was the exact opposite.

“(Y/N), you know that you could always make something up,” Jin commented as he stuck a fork into the leftovers from last night that he packed for lunch. When you straighten yourself out to look at your friends, they all nodded in agreement. 

“If it brings up bad memories you don’t have to worry about it. The teachers won’t know if you’re lying or not,” Taehyung added. He turned to the package of his own final; the photography class he took as his major. “I just need to figure out what I’m going to do for this.” 

You put down your booklet, deciding to steal something out of a book later, instead choosing to skim over the synopsis of Taehyung’s photography project. “What do you have to do?” 

He shrugged. “It’s kind of complicated. We’re supposed to take pictures and create compositions, use poses and techniques we’ve learned to create a feeling from words we randomly drew out of a hat.” 

“What words did you get?” Namjoon asked, stealing a strawberry from Jimin’s plastic container filled with fruit. 

“I got longing and affection,” Taehyung answered, picking up the little slips of paper and placing them in the middle of the table for everyone to look at. 

“You could always photograph (Y/N),” Jimin suggested. “I can take some costumes from the drama room and you can go out to the forest to make some fantasy themed stuff.”

You could swear up and down that your face was red as a tomato. Taehyung was smiling at you nervously, shrugging. “Would you be okay with that?” 

“Y-yeah, okay.” 

~

After school, Jimin led you and Taehyung into the drama room, telling you to wait as he rummaged through a giant trunk of costumes. You looked around the room, it was totally different than all the other classrooms you’ve been in - no chairs, desks or huge filing cabinets. Just bookshelves, masks on coat hangers, the trunk of costumes, piles of props and a blackboard at the back of the room. 

“A-hah!” Jimin’s exclamation of victory startled you out of thought, watching with wide eyes as he pulled out a white dress. It was long, loose and flowing, decorated with silver patterns and the sleeves were nearly detached from the bodice, made out of lace that was embroidered to look like stars. 

“Woah,” you whisper to yourself, walking up to Jimin as he waved you over. The fabric was even softer than you imagined as you felt the material between your thumb and forefinger. Somehow you couldn’t fathom how expensive this dress most likely was and how the school could have afforded it. 

“This dress was from the Lord of the Rings play we performed in grade 9. Mr Coachek said we can borrow it for the week provided it fits you.” 

“She’ll look even more beautiful with it on,” Taehyung commented absentmindedly to himself, taking the costume from Jimin and placing it into a plastic bag gently. “Thanks, ChimChim.” 

“Wait, Tae, I think something else goes with it-” Jimin stutters his steps around the room, your eyes following him as he rummages through the piles of props until he pulls out a vine-shaped crown from underneath a multitude of wigs. “This will tie it together.” 

“Thank you,” you whisper, still a little bit nervous. You’ve only had your picture taken once. 

Jimin smiled at you. “Don’t worry about it. Have fun, okay?” 

~

“Come on, follow me.” Taehyung held your hand tightly as he leads you through the hiking pathway, both of you still trucking around your backpacks. The two of you trekked through the small patch of woods about a mile away from your old ‘home’, soon coming into a clearing you didn’t know existed. 

“Here we are,” Taehyung announced proudly as you looked over the most beautiful meadow you had seen in your life. 

The other treeline was barely visible over the horizon, tall grass and multitudes of different flowers surrounded you both. The sun was starting to set in the sky, casting an orangey glow over the field, and the slight breeze passed a refreshing gust of fresh air past you, rustling the leaves of the forest gently and causing the grass to sway gently. 

“Wow,” you commented nearly breathlessly, closing your eyes to just feel the nature surrounding you. When you opened your eyes, Taehyung was standing in front of you, grinning away. You cringed slightly at the blackness of his eyes, but he quickly blinked and the moment passed. 

“Ready to start?” He asked, slipping his backpack from his shoulders and taking out a towel. 

“Yeah, I think so.” You slipped off your own to dig out your costume. In order to not damage it, you figured that you could change once you got to your destination. Taehyung held up the towel and faced away as you changed quickly behind it, folding up your normal clothes and slipping them into your bag. 

“Okay, I’m ready.” Taehyung lowered the towel, his eyes widening in awe of your form. You immediately blushed and avoided eye contact with him.

“You’re beautiful, (Y/N), you know that, right?” 

“I… I- um, ah… well…” 

“Don’t try to deny it,” he teased softly, grabbing his camera. “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” 

You don’t even respond this time, grinning bashfully. The dress feels nice, if not a tiny bit scratchy because of the lace. You still avoid eye contact but silently asked what you should do. 

“Okay, just… hmm…” Taehyung ponders the scenery around him before looking at you and grinning with an idea. “Wait a sec.” He scrambles about the meadow, picking up the flowers he deemed the most attractive. As soon as he had a bouquet in his grip, he handed it to you. “Turn your back to me, but stand at an angle, okay?” 

You follow his request, turning your back to him and looking at the horizon where the sun has started to glow a dark orange. 

“Hold the bouquet at your abdomen.” You gripped the bouquet, smiling fondly at the colours ranging from a soft purple to yellow to pure white. “This is great, look towards the light but don’t stare at the sun!” 

A few hours passed and Taehyung had you stand all over the meadow and at the edge of the forest, and now laying down in the softest patch in the meadow, eyes closed and resting your hands on your stomach, a single flower nestled in between your fingers. When you heard the snapping of his old-fashioned camera stop, you opened your eyes to see Taehyung smiling above you. 

“Thank you, (Y/N). I’ll get perfect on my project thanks to you.” 

“Thank you for making me feel beautiful, Tae.” 

Taehyung moved to sit next to you, leaning over you and placing a hand beside your shoulder to balance himself. “You’re always beautiful to me. Can I kiss you?” 

“Yes.” 

~

It was dark by the time you and Taehyung got home. You both knew that you were going to be late for dinner, but being in the meadow made the idea of texting Jin slip through your fingers. 

Your smiles and laughter were immediately wiped away as you opened the door to the house to see an angry Jin standing in the front hallway, hands on his hips.

“Where have you two been?!” Jin exclaimed as you hurried in, closed the front door and scrambled to kick off your shoes. “I’ve been worried sick, you’re two hours late!” 

“Sorry,” you and Taehyung both mumbled, looking down at the floor in guilt. 

“Jeez, come on, eat your dinner and march straight upstairs! You should know better than to come home late and not text me.” 

“Yes, Jin, sorry…” 

~

“Did you get any good pictures?” Jimin whispered from his and Jungkook’s bed later that night. 

“Yeah,” Taehyung answered, cuddling up with you and pulling up the covers. “I can’t wait to develop them.” 

“You didn’t get the dress dirty, right?” 

“No, it’s fine. We can return it tomorrow,” you add in, to Jimin’s sigh of relief. 

“Good. I’m glad you guys used it well.”


End file.
